With no hope in the near future for Republicans gaining a majority of the King County Council, the passing of Initiative 26 stands as the best news yet for conservative stealth candidates.
Republicans are well aware of how this could benefit them. You see, for some reason Democratic voters are typically the least informed about non-partisan races while Republicans are somehow able to alert their voting base about which candidates support conservative issues. And many times Republicans are able to alert their base without tipping off Democrats about their candidate’s conservative leanings.
In the last non-partisan race for City of Seattle Council, Tim Burgess won citywide election with a city core that typically votes 80% Democrat. Burgess’ own ad agency did work all the way up until 2004 for Concerned Women for America! And in 2005, Burgess wrote an op-ed piece for the Seattle Times where he said the following: “We don’t like abortion. We value the sacredness of marriage between a woman and man…We know that the law isn’t a good mechanism to resolve these issues, but moral persuasion is.” Burgess later publicly stated his support of a woman’s right to an abortion and gay-marriage rights when it was time to run for City Council.
Since issues such as abortion and gay rights rarely come at the municipal level many voters are sadly able ignore ultra-conservative leanings or even worse candidates can simply lie about their stance on social issues in non-partisan races knowing that such issues rarely come up for a vote.
In my strong opinion Initiative 26, which would make King County Council positions non-partisan, would be bad news for gays in King County but the Initiative is passing. There’s proof of that Republican information machine at work.
